Term Paper on "Human Resources Unions When Unions Were First"

Term Paper 10 pages (3335 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Human Resources

Unions

When unions were first introduced, membership in the United States rose steadily, but has declined sharply over the last few decades. The AFL-CIO divide which was largely a consequence of differences over the reasons for this decline and what to do about it, marks a historic time for labor unions in the United States. Even though there is divergence over what direction unions will take in the future, there is somewhat more accord both within labor leadership and amongst outside observers on what things are likely to be most influenced by the split in the short-term: union organizing, new member recruitment procedures and a potentially more focused advance to targeting particular businesses (the Future of Unions, 2005).

The amount of private segment employees in unions has gone down to a little over seven million, while the amount of public segment union members fell seven and half million. The proportion of private-sector workers in unions fell to almost seven percent, the lowest pace for private segment employees in more than a century. In 2009, for the first time in U.S. history, government workers made up more than half the country's union membership, but the proportion of government employees in unions fell to thirty six percent last year, down from the prior year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the whole unionization rate last year was down from twelve percent in 2009 and twenty percent in 1983. The peak unionization pace was thirty five percent throughout the mid-1950s, after a rush in unionization throughout the Great Depression and after World War II. Last year's fall in union membership came partially from large degree layoffs in quite a few sectors with a lot of union members, most markedly in structure, manufacturing, education and local government (Unions lose 12,000 in isles, 2011).

In 2009, union membership in Hawaii went down by 12,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hawaii also plunged from being the state with the second utmost proportion of union members in the nation to third. In 2010 about twenty two percent of employees were union members in Hawaii, down from almost twenty four percent in 2009. The amount of employees in unions went down sharply last year across the nation, with the national proportion slipping to about twelve percent, the lowest pace in more than seventy years. According to the bureau, New York had the greatest unionization pace of any state, at a little of twenty four percent, followed by Alaska at almost twenty three percent and Hawaii at almost twenty two percent. Hawaii led Alaska in 2009 with twenty three and half percent vs. A little over twenty two percent. North Carolina had the lowest pace last year, at three percent, with Arkansas and Georgia tied for second lowest at four percent (Unions lose 12,000 in isles, 2011).

From the first labor unions in this nation in the 1700's into the 1920's, the law has made it complicated for unions to survive and function. Unions prospered or withered based upon the authority and forfeit that their members were willing to make at the time, including risking their lives in opposition to corporation thugs, the law and occasionally the Army. With the passage of some federal laws, particularly the Wagner Act in 1935, unions were on a much better standing. This was throughout the Great Depression of the 1930's, and it was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan, the New Deal, in order to aid bringing about a financial revival to put more cash in employees' pockets so they could expend more (the Decline of Unions -- Why, 2007).

Another key to union development in the U.S. came about after United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis punched Carpenters Union President Bill Hutcheson in the nose at the American Federation of Labor (AFL) Convention in 1935. That event started a split in the AFL and the arrangement of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The AFL had traditionally been reluctant to organize industrial workers. The CIO altered that. A massive union organizing movement started across the U.S. And Canada. By the end of World War II, nearly thirty six percent of U.S. employees belonged to unions (the Decline of Unions -- Why, 2007).

After that the tide turned. In 1947, Congress approved a set of great alterations to the National Labor Relations Act, frequently called the Taft-Hartley Act, at the request of employers. Originally, the NLRA saw unionization as only a matter for employees to figure out for themselves; companies were to continue to be unbiased. The government had already began to let corporations state their disagreements with unions, but Taft-Hartley opened up what employers were permitted to do. The alterations that Taft-Hartley made were many. It permitted states to forbid union shop agreements, but still allowed non-members to get the profits of unions, and yet left the unions accountable for defending the non-members who didn't help pay the bills. It banned the closed shop, in which a worker had to be a union member in order to get a job at a particular employer, with some very constricted exceptions. It permitted workers to file decertification petitions and employers to file election petitions, for their own reasons. It prohibited unions from utilizing one of their best weapons, that of the secondary boycott, which happens when a union boycotts an employer's patrons throughout a strike, as well as the employer itself. It was very effectual for unions, it permitted the President to pronounce a strike a national crisis and summon an eighty day injunction in opposition to a union's strike. It prohibited strikes by federal employees, and it protected workers free speech, permitting businesses to hold captive audience meetings of workers who were attempting to organize, and criticize the union in situations where the union cannot be in attendance to react to the corporation's declarations (the Decline of Unions -- Why, 2007).

The shifting environments of the 1980's and 1990's damaged the situation of organized labor, which now correspond to a shrinking allocation of the labor force. While more than a third of working people belonged to unions in 1945, union membership declined to about twenty four percent of the U.S. labor force in 1979 and to almost fourteen percent in 1998. Increasing dues, enduring union contributions to political campaigns, and union members' hard-working voter-turnout labors kept unions' political power from waning as much as their membership. But court judgments and National Labor Relations Board decisions permitting employees to hold back the part of their union dues utilized to support, or contest, political contenders, damaged unions' power (the Decline of Union Power, 2011).

When industrial unions were structured in the early decades of the twentieth century, thousands of the most devoted and active associates and organizers were those who called themselves socialists and communists. Devoid of their labors, the great industrial unions wouldn't subsist. On the other hand, beginning during World War II and significantly hastening afterwards, U.S. unions began eradication of their local and international leaderships of these devoted unionists. Most unions were left with leaders that had less force, less association with the working members, and less visualization for the upcoming (the Decline of Unions -- Why, 2007).

A product of this awful time in American history was unions founded on what's known as the service model of unionism. This means that union leaderships try to serve the requirements of the associates. The consequence has caused associates to forget that a union is actually a self-help association in which an active membership supplies volunteer labors to take care of the union's wants. Action and democracy go hand in hand to supply the power of the association. The service model practice destabilized this and permitted union functionaries to establish themselves in the leadership and weaken the democracy of unions (the Decline of Unions -- Why, 2007).

During this time leaderships paid themselves big income, were very defensive of their jobs, feared real democracy, and focused on making deals with management. Worst of all, they failed to remember that corporate management and its partners on the political right, were the lifelong rivals of unions. As an alternative, they attempted to treat management as associates. Today it can be seen that the consequence of that attitude meant that companies founded in this nation, and built by American workers, no longer see themselves as American at all, but as international, with devotion to no nation. They see the fruits of the labor of their workers as theirs alone, to spend and invest where and how they want, with no consideration to the well-being of anybody else (the Decline of Unions -- Why, 2007).

The unions failed to see what was coming, how big business was taking the cash American employees made for it and investing it overseas, supplying jobs in other nations where it didn't have to pay personnel as much. This nation has been considerably de-industrialized in an attempt to create higher business proceeds in the short-term,… READ MORE

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